Following the announcement of her upcoming album Gag Order, which will be released on May 19th via Kemosabe/RCA Records, Kesha has released the LP’s first two pre-release tracks, “Eat The Acid” and “Fine Line,” which serve as a bold unveiling of the sonic and emotional direction of her new Rick Rubin-produced album.
“Fine Line” is an open acknowledgment of the follies of our fickle world, playing out like an extraterrestrial look at life’s delicate dualities – things that may change in the blink of an eye. It ties into the overarching theme of the upcoming album, which is to embrace the lightness of life only by also embracing the darkness.
On “Eat The Acid”, over a humming organ-like synthesizer, Kesha recounts an existential breakthrough she had one night. In a recent album manifesto (via Nylon), Kesha shared the origin story for “Eat The Acid”: “This night sent me like a rabid animal into a journey of self-discovery within my consciousness… My ego, or sense of aloneness, now suddenly felt like just a small part of the whole. My ego felt dismantled…. I woke up the morning after this experience and wrote the first song for this album, the seed and catalyst for the whole project.”
She later added, “My mom warned me at a very young age to not take acid. She told me how she had taken some as a teen and it had shown her so much… too much. I made it a point to never, ever touch it. I still haven’t. I didn’t want to see it all. I wanted to live blissfully unaware and happy.”
‘Gag Order’, which Kesha is executive producer on, is a full-bodied collection that flows like a stream-of-conscious journey through the psychedelic dark depths of the human psyche followed by basking in the cleansing light when finally reaching the surface. Forged in the fires of self-discovery and learning to finally accept the ugly, scary sides of ourselves, ‘Gag Order’ feels like an emotional exorcism, unearthing and facing the darkness in oneself, brought to life with experimental, otherworldly production & lyrical vulnerability unlike anything she has written before. On ‘Gag Order’, Kesha confronts her own reflection & finds empowerment in her own voice, with beautiful, heart aching results.
Kesha has sold more than 14 million total album equivalents worldwide, has approximately 6.9 billion audio streams and 1.7 billion video streams worldwide, and has had 9 Top 10 hits on The Billboard Hot 100, including four # 1 singles at Top 40 Radio – “TiK ToK,” “Your Love Is My Drug,” “Die Young,” and “Timber.” She has earned two GRAMMY nominations and was also named one of Time Magazine’s Time 100.
Kesha’s “Eat The Acid” and “Fine Line” are out now on all digital music platforms worldwide via Sony Music Entertainment. Listen here.
